At Apple Inc., former top lawyer Gene Daniel Levoff was responsible for making sure employees didn’t violate insider-trading laws. It turns out he was the one who was buying and selling shares illegally, according to U.S. authorities.

Levoff, who until last year was Apple’s senior director of corporate law, repeatedly traded on non-public revenue-and-earnings filings dating back to 2011, the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The illegal investments led to about $227,000 in profits, while allowing him to avoid $377,000 of losses, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Newark, New Jersey, which filed criminal charges against Levoff

Apple said it was contacted by authorities last summer and conducted a thorough investigation, which resulted in Mr. Levoff being fired. Kevin Marino, an attorney for Mr. Levoff, said the lawyer would rebut the criminal charge and the SEC’s civil claims. “We look forward to defending him in both matters,” Mr. Marino said

Mr. Levoff, 45 years old, for a decade sat on a corporate committee that helped Apple’s chief executive and chief financial officer review the firm’s compliance with investor-protection laws. Those laws require companies disclose timely and accurate information. As a result, he routinely had access to Apple’s securities filings before they were made public, according to the criminal complaint filed in federal court in Newark. Mr. Levoff often signed trading disclosures for executives and board members, including services chief Eddy Cue and Apple director and former Vice President Al Gore.

Perhaps more importantly for Apple, Mr. Levoff managed the company’s subsidiaries. The company has a longstanding practice of creating subsidiaries under different names to sometimes purchase supplies and components for special projects, so that it can keep those initiatives secret, people familiar with practice said. Mr. Levoff typically set those subsidiaries up, the people said. His department also handled the legal review of the company’s finances on a weekly basis, one of these people said.

About the author

Todd Horwitz - Author of “Average Joe Options“. Todd began his trading career in 1980 at the CBOE. He was one of the original traders in the OEX & helped start the SPX. He is a member the CME where he trades S&P futures as well as foreign currencies & is a regular contributor to CNBC, Bloomberg, BNN, Fox & many other major news networks.